Joanne Williamson with Sean

Leslie Dawson-North with Chase and Kassi

Jerry Bergen with Breezy

The AKC Agility National Championships were held November 13-15
at Henderson Arena in College Park, GA. College Park is a suburb
of Atlanta fairly close to the Atlanta Airport, as was easy to
tell from the noise of the planes overhead. Another source of
noise was the train line that went right by the front of the building.
Since there was a street crossing, the trains would blow their
whistles just as they passed. The arena was large enough to accommodate
two 100 x 100 foot rings and was well lighted. Bleachers lined
the sides so it was easy to get a good view of all the action.
The footing was hard packed dirt. Dust was a real problem. Every
evening the rings were watered down but by the end of a day's
competition, everything was covered with dust and if you stood
at one end and looked down the length of the ring, the dust caused
it to look hazy inside. Jerry and Lu Bergen with Breezy, Leslie
Dawson-North with Chase and Kassi, and myself with Sean crated
together in a back room off the arena. It was a lot quieter, cooler,
and less noisy than the arena area. Other Beardie people in attendance
without there dogs were: Liz Cox who flew to Atlanta from NC and
worked as a ring steward on Friday and Mary Jo Steger. Tien Tran,
a talented photographer who I think CA BAD members are well acquainted
with, took ring shots that were available for purchase (I got
three good ones of Sean).Finally, there were vendors for all the
agility stuff you or your dog might desire!

Friday was the team competition. There were 19 teams entered.
Entries from a single state formed a team unless there were less
than four from the state in which case they were grouped together
in some semi-logical way. For instance, Jerry and Breezy were
the only entry from Vermont so they were placed on a New England
team and Leslie with Chase and Kassi were on a "North Country"
team which included the other Canadian entrant as well as entries
from other states sharing a border with Canada. Prizes for individual
performances were offered only at the international jump heights
of 16" and 26". This caused a number of people who would
normally have entered 20" or 24" to compete at 26"
so the 20" class, in which all the Beardies competed, was
reduced in size and had 50 entries. The competition was held under
international rather than AKC rules. Basically, this means the
A-frame was at 6' 3" and the up-contact was judged (as in
USDAA) rather than 5'6"with no up-contact judging (as in
AKC), the contact zones were smaller, the time standards faster,
knocked bars, missed contacts, and refusals were counted as 5-faults
each rather than elimination (as in AKC), but off-courses did
cause elimination. In order to speed up judging, if you managed
to accumulate any four types of faults before you finished the
course, you were whistled off and received no score for the round.
The judges for the day were the AKC reps, Dan Dege and Katie Grier.
20" , 24" and 26" Jump heights were run in one
ring while 8", 12", and 16" were done in the other
ring. We had Katie Grier for JWW and Dan Dege for standard. Both
courses were challenging but fun. Sean and I had the honor (?)
of being the first entry to show in the 20" class the whole
weekend. That meant on Friday and on Sunday we went first of everyone
with no opportunity to watch before running. Each morning there
was an open course walk-thru from 7:30-8 am. Then whichever class
was running first had an additional eight minutes to walk the
course. In the afternoon, however, we only had a single 12-minute
walk-thru so I had to cut mine short in order to make sure Sean
was warmed up and ready to run. On Friday morning, I found running
first to be very scary and consequently my handling was somewhat
tentative. Sean was great, however. Holding his stay through the
noise of the PA system and the crowd, he had a solid but slow
round, no course faults but 5.13 time faults which turned out
to be very significant to the team results. Leslie and Chase had
some problems and incurred an off-course. But Leslie came back
and had a beautiful clean, fast run with Kassi. Jerry and Breezy
also had an outstanding clean run; Breezy was really on and moving
like a dark gray streak! The afternoon standard class was also
a fun class with no table to slow the dogs down. I chose to run
with Sean from the start and when we were about four obstacles
into the course, Dan blew his whistle. What a terrible sound!
At first, all I could think of was I hadn't even done enough obstacles
to make four mistakes. But it turned out that the timer's watch
had malfunctioned. So we went back and started again. Sean responded
with a nice clean run, well under SCT. Leslie and Chase again
had problems, a see-saw flyoff, and a missed contact but a really
nice time. Leslie and Kassi had their second outstanding run of
the day, and Jerry and Breezy were great also. At the end of the
two rounds the Team standings were as follows: 1-Texas, 2- Minnesota,
3-Ohio, 4-Illinois,- California. As it turned out, the NJ and
CA teams were tied for fifth on faults. Each team was required
to have at least one dog from each height group (mini or open)
in the final four. The NJ team had 3 mini dogs with two clear
rounds each as did the CA team but our minis were about 12 secondsfaster
than the CA minis. The minimum number of faults each team's open
dog had was 5 but the CA open dog was about 20 seconds faster
than the NJ open dog so CA made it into the finals. If Sean and
I had been only 0.14 secondsfaster (or about the error in manual
timing), NJ would have been in the finals and not CA! The 4-dogs
from each of the 5 teams had a final round on a new course to
determine the team championship. You could really see the effect
the pressure had as each team had one member eliminated due to
an off-course. When the dust settled, the standings had changed
completely:

1- Illinois, 2- California, 3- Minnesota, 4- Ohio, 5- Texas.

The individual winners of the international classes were Gerrie
Brown of Texas with his BC, Larrie, in the 26" class (0 faults/65.92
seconds for 2 rnds), and Diane Bauman of New Jersey and her Cocker
Spaniel, Torville (0 faults/68.60 seconds). Both had been members
of the 1998 AKC World team.

In the 20" height class (of 50 total entries), the individual
standings were as follows:

Since these classes were run under international rules, they
were only for fun and practice- no legs could be won. Interestingly,
the practice turned out to be important as there were a lot of
see-saw fly-offs in standard on Friday. The see-saw had slats
and was a bit heavy to turn and a number of dogs approached it
as if it were the dog walk and were most suprized to find it moving.
Everyone was a quick learner, however, because on Saturday and
Sunday there were few fly-offs overall.

Saturday's and Sunday's competition constituted the National
Championships. There were two rounds each day- one standard and
one JWW. On Saturday, standard was first and on Sunday, the order
was flipped. Our judges on Saturday were Mike Bond and Tom Schultz
and on Sunday, Kim Thomas-Simmons and Lori Schultz. The rules
under which the competition was held were modified. First, although
we had to do the table, the 5 seconds were not added to the SCT
as they usually are. Second, any off-course, refusal, or knocked
bar was scored at 18 faults/occurrence instead of the usual 5,
thus an off-course would lead to an NQ. There were 96 entries
in the 20" height class of which 91 ran in all four rounds.

Saturday's Standard was another fun but challenging course.
The weave pole entry was difficult and in addition was followed
by a tunnel discrimination which caused many entries to miss the
last pole or go into the wrong end of the tunnel. On Saturday,
the 20" class ran after the 24" so I had a chance to
watch and get some idea of the problem areas on the course. Sean
and I led off with a solid clean run. We were followed by Leslie
and Chase who were also clean. Leslie and Kassi had an outstanding
run- her time would have been even faster but Kassi decided to
get up off her elbows "commenting" to Leslie while on
the table and necessitating a restart of the table count. Jerry
and Breezy were the last of the BADs to go. They had an outstanding
run going until after the table when they incurred an off-course.
Jerry, however, kept going and finished the run which was important
because it meant they got a non-zero score for the round.

The Beardies placed as follows:

Kassi, 19th; Chase, 22nd; Sean, 26th; Breezy, 74th.

The JWW course, by comparison, seemed relatively easy. That
doesn't mean some dogs didn't handle the course well. One of the
BCs who earned a placement in the morning standard class was eliminated
with a 0 on the JWW course. Sean and I again led off the 20"
entries with a clean, but somewhat slow run. Leslie's Chase and
Kassi both turned in clean, fast runs and as did Jerry and Breezy.

At the end of the second, the Beardie standings were as follows:

Kassi, 13th; Chase, 16th; Sean, 23rd; Breezy, 63rd.

The results of the Sunday classes determined the overall winners.
The morning JWW course took its toll among the 24" leaders-
Gerrie Brown with Larrie and Nancy Gyes with Riot and Scud all
had faults on this course and dropped out of contention. There
were two serpentine sequences, a weave pole/tunnel discrimination,
and a difficult pinwheel. Lots of dropped bars and off-courses.
Sean and I ran first of everyone. We led off the class with our
third solid, clean run of the competition. Leslie's Chase and
Kassi both turned in outstanding clean runs. Jerry and Breezy
had a clean run but time faults due to a couple of small problems.

At the end of the third round, the Beardie standings were as
follows:

Kassi, 7th; Chase, 10th; Sean, 18th; Breezy, 53rd.

We were all very proud that Leslie placed both her Beardies
in the top ten for the final standard round. All of the top ten
ranked dogs in each height class were pulled from the regular
running order and run at the end of the class in reverse order
of the placements i.e. 10th first to 1st last. Animal Planet filmed
the final standard round and it is supposed to be aired January
23, 1999. They had mini cameras in a tunnel, near the weave poles
and on jump wings. The standard course didn't seem all that hard
but had tricky sequences that claimed a number of casualties.
After the table, there was a tunnel/circular jump sequence that
required you to avoid a tunnel discrimination followed immediately
by a see-saw call-off- many fast dogs were on the see-saw before
their handlers could get a word out! Sean and I led off the final
round. He turned in his 4th, and best, clean run of the competition.
Jerry and Breezy had a solid qualifying run. By the end of the
round, but before the ten leaders had run, Sean was in 14th place.
Poor Leslie had to wait through 180+ 20" and 24" dogs
with the pressure mounting. She opened the finals with a good,
clean run with Chase. The 9th place dog NQ'd with a bar down.
A Keeshond had a clean run. And then amazingly all but the #1
and #2 ranked dogs proceeded to NQ. It was difficult for Leslie
who had to run Kassi with only two dogs in between. They were
having an excellent run when inexplicably, Kassi missed a weave
pole. Only 4 of the top ten 20" dogs qualified in the final
round. But we were very proud that one of the teams was Chase
and Leslie who ended up fourth overall with a spot on the winner's
podium.

These final results show the value of consistency over sheer
speed in a competition like this. Only 8 dogs of 91 in the class
had four clean rounds.

It was great to spend the weekend with Jerry and Lu, Leslie
and her husband, and their Beardies. Collectively, we had a lot
to be proud of. Our dogs gave their best in every round and we
all received numerous compliments on their performances. And we
all went home with multiple green ribbons (well, except for Sunday,
when they ran out of green ribbons because more teams had qualified
than expected). As for me, I am really proud of myself- a whole
weekend of pressure and not one attack of the major "stupids",
a personal record. And Sean has four new toys he got to "shop"
for himself- one for each clean run! So now its on the Springfield
on Friday and three chances to earn that 10th MXJ leg.

Joanne-Thank you again for your outstanding job of reporting.
I really felt that I was there, reading all of your descriptions
of each event! Congratulations to each one of you! So proud of
you and Sean and looking forward to some day meeting Leslie Dawson-North
and her outstanding Beardies. I seem to remember in one of my
several phone conversations with her that these are the first
dogs she has ever trained. If this is so, she is truly amazing!
I hope that your encouragement will prompt her to send complete
agility records to me for posting on Chase, Kassi, and Koddi's
BAD pages! I see, too, from one of your other posts today that
both Chase and Kassi have earned their MADs! (USDAA Masters) They
are the first and only Beardies to have earned this so far! Best
of luck to you and Jerry this coming weekend!